


Kyber Covers Over Everything

by magikfanfic



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Backstory, Blood, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Non-Linear Narrative, Pre-Rogue One, hanahiki kinda. star wars force hanahiki, it's not as bad as it could be considering but still, masturbation vaguely mentioned, non specified pov, probably counts too so be careful of that. i mean. there are crystals growing in people, probably not canon compliant, sexual situations vaguely mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-17 09:28:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18962500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikfanfic/pseuds/magikfanfic
Summary: The only blessing is that kyber grows slow.





	Kyber Covers Over Everything

**Author's Note:**

> I love the hanahiki trope. I wanted to write a hanahiki story. I had to sort of change it to make sense for the Star Wars universe and then I decided I wanted to be really weird with the pov. I'm not sure I'm happy with this fic, and I may need to revisit hanahiki at a later point.
> 
> Title stolen and revised from a lyric in the song Not in Kansas by The National. The original line is "The flowers cover over everything", which is about as hanahiki as it gets.

The only blessing is that kyber grows slow. 

***

The truth rattles in his lungs like pebbles shaken in a flask. When he settles a hand on his chest, he imagines that he can feel it, slow, sweet tendrils hidden away in the dark, unfolding, unfurling, seeking a way out, glowly softly. In the dark of his room with his hand on his chest, purposefully making each breath small and slow, shallow to keep everything from exploding into bright blooms of pain, he imagines what it must look like, the shards of crystals as they form, whether they look like pillars or petals. He tries not to think about the fact that kyber can poison a man, especially from the inside out. He tries not to think about how difficult it becomes to take a deep breath, how he can feel things stab if he fills his lungs to capacity. 

He tries not to think about the trickles of dried blood that await him on his pillow when he wakes.

One day, something kills everyone, he knows, whether it be old age or war or accidents. And, no, he never thought that his death would be the result of this, of kyber crystals growing slowly in the wet, warm, darkness of his body, fed by Force and the pangs of want, desire, need. Love. He never thought he would die of love, but there are worse ways to go, he supposes.

He skates his fingers down his bare chest, eyes closed, tries to imagine the world of wonder that exists under the flesh. There is the cage of his ribs and the pack of muscle and fat. There is his heart, shuddering.

And there are his lungs, struggling to serve their purpose when the crystals have already taken root, burrowing in, burrowing out. 

If the healers cut him open, he knows what they will find even if the shards have not yet reached his throat, his lips. Kyber grows slowly, after all, but it grows steadily. There is a patch inside of his body with arms like a vine reaching out, reaching up. In the darkness of his body, it will still glow pale blue as it feeds on the Force inside of him and the love inside of him, all the love that he has swallowed. 

If the healers cut him open, stretched out the meat of him, flung wide the door of his cage of bone, it would shimmer and shine in the light, slick with mucus, glittering with its own light. They could make a pendant from it. They could carve it down and form the focal piece of a weapon that would never work. The kyber inside his body will only resonate for two people, this he already knows. Its whisper tuned for two sets of ears only, his and one other, who will never hear it.

His hand on his chest presses down slightly, and he winces in phantom pain because he cannot actually feel it stab into anything in his body; it is too small yet, it is only shudderingly slowly to life, but he imagines, when he closes his eyes, when he breathes shallowly, when his fingers drift lower to tease himself to life in the darkness, an act which only fuels the growth because he always thinks about what he shouldn’t, he cannot help it, there is a reason why the loop closes, there is a note of obsession to the disease, he imagines that the crystals inside of him glow pale blue, that as he reaches his crescendo, the light increases until it can be seen through his skin, until it illuminates him, sends a signal across the temple.

He does not want to die coughing out blood covered crystals. Does not want to die from kyber dust circulating through his system, shutting down his organs, twisting his mind into hallucinatory fragments of could be futures, would be truths. No, he doesn’t want that, and it would be so simple to end it. 

Yet, he cannot manage that, either.

So he grips himself harder and spills into his hand, groaning softly, and hopes that the song of the kyber in his chest will reach through the Force and find the object of his affection, speak the words that he cannot.

It doesn’t work that way, he knows. His Force cannot reach the rest of it now.

Nothing will do this for him. He will have to take action himself. 

He coughs, once, purposefully does not look at the hand he runs over his lips, wipes the other on his sheets, and settles onto his side, breathing shallowly. When he closes his eyes, he tries not to think of the smile that can light an entire room. Not that it helps. It never helps.

He wakes, again, to blood on the pillow but still no shards.

Yes, it’s a blessing, how slowly kyber grows.

***

Every difficult thing has a simple beginning. Every tree with branches and a wide trunk and leaves stretching high into the sky to embrace the sun, started out as just a seed. Even kyber has a beginning. 

He breathes unencumbered, deep, fills his lungs up like bellows, like an air sac in preparation for a dive. There is nothing prickly in his body, there is nothing hidden, nothing growing that shouldn’t be. He seeks knowledge not looks, not kisses, not affection. The only goal he has set his sights on is guardian-hood and proving himself. Life is simple, life is free.

Life is a turning, twisting thing that never settles, and the future is a windsock spinning, stretching streamers out every which way so that you can never really tell, after, the exact one you might have seen at any given time. It’s like flipping through pages and attempting to land on a specific one, the odds are so small, you are so likely to become lost.

His eyes settle on the man across the room, and it’s like a lightning strike inside his chest. At least that’s what he compares it to, though, having never been struck himself it’s probably an exaggeration, but he has seen the trees in the desert with their cores blown out, singed at the edges, and that is how he feels now despite the fact that the eye contact lasts for only a second. There’s a shrug and a smile, nothing flashy, nothing large, nothing that should start anything, but he feels planted, he feels rooted to the spot, watching, even as the man turns away and leaves his line of sight. The same trickery of the mind that will coalesce distinct objects into strange visions in the night, seems to form the man again out of thin air, seems to hold him there, smiling, matrixing him out of nothing but a fond desire to see him again.

Shaking his head to dispel the mirage, he goes back to putting his body through the slow paces of a kata, and when he coughs it is just from the sand his feet kick up. The soil has only been turned, ripe for sowing.

***

It’s rare, this slow, ultimately unsubtle death. Its causes and cures are numbered in the archive, written out on old pages in a leather-bound tome that his fingers have brushed over countless times at this point. At first, it was just a simple curiosity that drove him into reading everything he could find about the Jedi. There is so much space between the Jedi and the Whills, so many differences in concept that have cropped up over the reaches of years when, once, they were one tree. They are still one tree, he supposes, but that bit of the trunk has been covered in fallen leaves and dirt, buried, now you can only see the two limbs that twist outward, away from each other, growing further apart. 

It’s thought to primarily be a Jedi disease, this progression of kyber crystals that will ultimately drown him in blood, suffocate him, poison him. Only the Jedi are so reluctant with their feelings, after all. Only the Jedi are known to repress things to the point of no return. Only the Jedi can fail so much in remembering where they are in the universe.

When he coughs, he turns his head so that the small drops of blood will stain the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger rather than the pages of the old book. Someone else may have need of it one day, and he wouldn’t want them to be frightened away by the evidence of what can happen when the disease is left unattended.

There are cures. There are solutions. 

He feels like streamers twisting in the wind still, unable to latch onto a single path, unable to unfurl one from the rest. Instead of even trying, he looks at the blood on his hand, turns it slightly so that he can watch the light pick out the glint of kyber inherent in every drop. Inside him, he imagines he can feel the tree of crystal moving, and he steadies his breathing, makes it shallower still. 

Kyber grows slowly, but kyber still grows, and there is only so much room in his body for it to claim. He’s seen diagrams of the lungs, the way they fit under the cage of his ribs, the network of bronchi inside of them so much like branches themselves. He places a hand on his chest, softly, and thinks how there cannot be much room inside at all, how the kyber is said to take root at the very bottom of the lungs, beginning in one, spreading up, the slow climb of kyber, which prefers warm and damp, which likes things to nestle in and the dark. It will fill one side before spreading to the other, eventually, if the sufferer lives long enough, inevitably climbing up the trachea and out. Very few beings live long enough to enter those lates stages. Death comes first in most cases. Death or a cure. 

There are three possible solutions.

Wiping his hand on his robe, he closes the book and pushes it away.

***

There are a million times when it could have begun, too many to remember all of them, too many to really count, but he knows it was not that smile across the room. One look is not enough. If it had only been the look, things would have been safe, but the trouble is, he supposes, it is never one look, is it? It is never only one thing. 

It is a heap of smiles and looks and moments spent speaking softly together in darkened halls. It is hands brushing and not being pulled away, a voice quiet, lips near the ear, laughter sweet and dark like wine he has tasted in the marketplace. It is a chest heaving with exertion from a spar and a hand that lingers just a moment too long when offered for assistance.

There are so many things that when he sits down to try and sort them, to bury his hands in them and shuffle through them for the catalyst, his undoing, he cannot manage to even find the bottom. All he can do is cough and wipe the glittering evidence of his affliction on his robes. 

One solution involves forgetting. Everything about the object of the affection. But memories themselves are like the branches of the kyber crystals growing inside the tree of his lungs, and these span so much time, so much that he is unwilling to give up.

He thought that if he could sit down and logically determine the lines, the moment, the beginning, then he could weigh it and find it wanting when balanced out with his life itself, but it’s not that simple. This, too, the thing that pains him, the thing that kills him, is also his life.

***

Meditation has become difficult. Where once slipping into the Force was as easy as stepping into a calm pool of warm water, when he closes his eyes now, he feels caught in the torrent, in the waves of something else. It is not as easy as wiping his mind and drifting away on the currents. Nothing is placid or calm. All that exists for him is a stormy sea, a million thoughts and feelings that rise to the surface in an attempt to drown him. He cannot focus past the person who occupies his heart, all he can do is inextricably focus on the situation.

A smarter man would stop trying altogether, but he has always been of the opinion that his dedication is enough to overcome any obstacle. If he simply runs his fists into the walls over and over, they will eventually crumble away, he will eventually be free of this, the decision will be his own to make and not forced by some affliction of his body, of his mind.

He is wrong, but he has never been good at accepting when he is wrong,

***

Other beings notice eventually. It’s difficult to hide completely because of the coughing into hands, always turning away and wiping the evidence on his robes, counting his own shallow breaths, finding reasons not to partake in activities that would exacerbate it, such as sparring. It was always going to be seen by someone at some point. Even after washing them, his robes sparkle with all the kyber particles caught in the fabric. Perhaps it is that which gives him away finally. 

“You could just confess,” one of his fellows says when they are in the archive together, arranging books.

He has been so very careful here, fearing that if anyone was going to catch on it would be those with the easiest access to knowledge. Now it feels like someone has pulled his robes from him, left him standing out in the open, naked, exposed, or like they have made the first cut across his skin, ready to extract the crystals piece by piece and cauterize his connection to the Force, to life itself. His shoulders fall. 

“That’s easiest, right?”

Despite his better instincts, he glances over to look at Initiate Lemmons, blinking at him with his very wide Mon Calamari eyes, always careful, always cautious. Lemmons is a good man, fussy and particular sometimes, reaching ever for knowledge, but a good man nonetheless. Rather than drop his head, rather than walk away, he stuffs his hands into the sleeves of his robes and focuses on not coughing, on trying to shift his breaths such that they will not disrupt the spiraling towers of kyber that form slowly, steadily inside of him. It’s a guarding of sorts because, of course, he understands that kyber is beautiful even when its presence is destructive. “To some,” he says, and it is not an answer. He has so few of those now. 

Lemmons twists his hands in a way that betrays his anxiety; it’s easy to tell that he wishes he had never started this conversation now that the repercussions of it are all around them. Sometimes things get spoken into being which cannot be taken away. “The other options seem much more drastic and,” he hums, and the noise is like someone singing under water.

He wonders whether his voice will sound like that when the kyber is too numerous, when it pokes holes through his lungs, when it lets everything surrounding them rush inside of them, a boat capsizing. Is that even how it works or just the way he wants to think about it because it seems slightly beautiful, as though his body is a skiff taking on water? It will not be pleasant to drown in his own blood. It will not be pleasant to hallucinate visions from toxic crystals while his organs shut down. Nothing about this sort of love, stoppered and viciously guarded, is pleasant, it seems except for maybe the way it glows in the dark. Except for maybe the way it makes his chest feel warm and his heart quicken.

Except for the way it infiltrates everything. 

“Well,” Lemmons shrugs, finally continuing to speak. “The other options seem so final. And wouldn’t you need to leave the Whills?”

“Not everyone in the Whills can feel the Force.” It’s the truth. Most of them, in fact, cannot feel much of the Force at all, do not know how it ebbs and flows, how it sparkles, how it sings. He knows because it is spoken about, each to each, in communal sleeping areas from the time that the initiates are very young. For most of them, meditation is like closing their eyes and breathing, alone with their own thoughts, settling. They think that is communing. They do not miss the knowledge that there is a flame hovering in the dark. They do not miss what they do not know.

Ah, but he would. Of course, there is so much he would miss, so much he would lose. No matter which path he chose, there would be losing.

Lemmons steeples his fingers and taps them together, soundless, anxious fidgeting. “Well, yes, of course, but it’s not just that. How much would you need to relearn?”

Rather than answer, he walks away because the answer is boundless. He does not even know the full reaches of the kyber tree. How do you relearn a life? How do you relearn a heart? He does not know, and there is no one in the temple that he is aware of who could even suggest an answer.

It is a rare disease and mostly confined to Jedi based on the texts that he has read. 

Pneumokyber disease, hanahiki, the Jedi scourge. More simply, unspoken, unrequited love.

He has not been able to make himself speak any of these words to live, even though he knows they’re his truth. There is no chance that he can fool himself into thinking it is just a respiratory infection, the result of too many trips to the kyber caves, of breathing the dust in the carving room too deeply, of allergies from walking through the gardens, of a cold due to sleeping with the window unfettered. There is no hiding from the truth no matter how much he would like to shield his eyes and his thoughts from it. When his hand catches in the sunlight, it glitters.

He has to pause for several moments and stare, wondering whether the kyber creating the effect is on his skin or in his skin itself. He still hasn’t figured it out conclusively when he finally walks out the door.

***  
Twilight is gleaming softly around them, a languid mixture of rust red and the beginnings of a purple across the skyline that looks like a particularly deep bruise. They are stretched out on their backs on one of the temple balconies, high enough that they can look over most of NiJedha and to the waste beyond the mesa, high enough to catch the peeking stars that will emerge, though if he’s honest with himself that may not be where his eyes linger the most. It’s not a large balcony, but they are spread out in such a way that they are not touching, and he is terribly cognizant of that fact as well as ensuring to keep it that way by carefully adjusting himself as needed, shifting but always away. 

“What do you think you’ll want to do when you become a guardian?”

“Protect Jedha. Protect the Whills.” There has really never been another answer. “You?”

An arm comes up to sweep a broad arc, indicating the sky. “I’ve heard that some venture out, beyond, to spread the word.”

This is not a lie. He is silent and inside him, something curls.

“Have you ever met a Jedi?”

“No.”

“I wonder whether it’s all worth it.”

Probably not, he thinks, but does not say because he is watching the curve of a cheek, the purse of a mouth; he is watching the way that the breeze, shifting into the colder nighttime wind, draws gooseflesh across the arm nearest to him. 

“Sometimes,” he says and then stops, the hand stretched out to the night being settled on his chest again but this time close enough for their arms to brush. 

It stills the breath in his throat, and he has to clench down on his immediate reaction to cough because once it starts, he doesn’t know if he can stop it. “Sometimes?” he manages to say, to force out as a question. If he can just get him talking again, it will draw attention away from him and then maybe it will be safer to let his lungs clench painfully around the spikes of crystal growth. 

He clears his throat before continuing. “Sometimes I think it would be interesting to follow that path.”

“To spread the word across the universe?” It has its merits, he supposes, though the days of any active attempts to convert others have long since passed. Nowadays, the Whills is mostly spread out through the stars in the sake of knowledge, both distributing it and gathering it. No longer do flocks of pilgrims seek out Jedha and the oldest Whills temple to pay tribute. The Force sustains them as is its will. One day, he knows, that will may change, and it will not sustain them any longer. Death comes to all things eventually, even the Whills.

The eyes that turn to him, that catch him looking but do not seem to hold any questions or condemnation, are bright. “No, to be a Jedi.”

His entire throat constricts, and he has to turn his head to cough and wheeze until it lessens. Even when it passes, he isn’t quite sure what to say. The Jedi have all but abandoned them, feeling that the rift between their types of believe is too wide to ford, and if they had any interest in the Whills initiates at all, they would have come to gather them themselves, rambling back to Jedha with their tests and their upturned noses, with their begrudging acceptance. “Oh,” is what he finally says because what else is there, and he doesn’t quite trust his throat to carry other words without betraying him.

It doesn’t really seem to matter all that much. His soft exclamation is met with a cough anyway and then a small chuckle. “Do you have the temple cold, too?”

Everything in his body clenches, but, no, no. It cannot ever be that easy. “I suppose so,” he says, and looks out, up, at the stars festooned across the sky again. They are clearer to see now, purple and blue having taken over from the reds and oranges of the sunset. They are in the gloaming now, and he worries that the kyber particles on his lips may catch and glow in the dark. “We should probably go in.”

There are fingers barely brushing his arm, and they are warm. They seem to not know how close they are, each twitch practically sending a shiver that goes straight to his lungs, and, oh, he thinks that he can feel the kyber form. 

The only answer to his comment is a hum that seems to come from a slightly constricted throat.

“The night air will only make the cold worse.” He’s not completely sure how he manages to choke that out, but there it is, hovering, like something calamitous.

“I suppose.” The words seem sad and then the fingers disappear along with the warmth against his side that he wasn’t really cognizant of until it’s gone.

He wants to catch his fingers in the hem of the robe that sweeps so close, wants to fist into it and pull him back, pull him down, twine their hands together, wants them pressed against each other, longs to touch the curve of that cheek and speak and kiss and plummet, to confess and choke up bits of unrooted crystal on the ground, to be freed. 

Instead, he sits up, one hand curled against his chest, willing his lungs not to give him up now.

They are both quiet for what feels like far too long, their hindered breathing the only sound other than a quiet shriek of the wind that is a constant on Jedha. 

“I believe Master Wren is always looking for diplomatically minded guardians to be ambassadors on other worlds,” he offers even though he hates himself for presenting an option out, an option away. “You could ask her about that.”

The sound of quickly retreating footsteps and muffled coughing is the only answer that he gets, and it is quickly covered by his own, which he slaps a hand over his mouth in an effort to conceal. 

Blood covers his hand, glittering, glowing, a chunk of broken crystal in his palm. Even his tears, when he weeps, seemed brushed with their own sort of stardust.

***

The healing master is glaring at him, though their eyes are not completely cold just annoyed. “As you’re well aware, you’re supposed to report medical situations to us within two days.”

He just shrugs and continues breathing slowly through the vapor mask that the master placed over his nose and mouth. The inhalant is a combination of specific aromatic herbs and bacta; it soothes his throat and airways, calming the injuries that have felt like being clawed by a loth cat from the inside. There cannot be much time left now, he supposes, but it has been months already so what is a little longer.

He wonders what death is like. He wonders when exactly he opted to do nothing at all and what that means about him.

There are three solutions. There are three solutions and rather than pick the wrong one, which seems to be all of them, he has opted for none.

“Your case of pneumokyber has advanced well beyond the beginning stages. At this point, you must have known what was happening. You’re not an idiot. This will kill you.”

He lifts the mask for a moment, but his voice still sounds like rocks dragged over glass when he speaks, and it hurts. “I’ve heard that sometimes people fall out of love.”

The healing master clicks their tongue at him, irritated, and reaches out to replace the mask. “That wouldn’t matter. The Force loop is already locked in. Even if that happened,” they glare at him as though they cannot imagine that it might, “it wouldn’t be enough of an emotional catharsis to break the loop, to expel the growth. Assuming that confession isn’t an option, I don’t think you’d be able to survive an extended, solitary meditation mission. You’ve left this for too long.” They cross their arms over their chest, all six of them, still glaring. “Attempting to get a Force healer to manually break the loop and remove the kyber is not going to be easy, and the ramifications of that. And the time needed.” They stop talking and shake their head slowly.

He knows. He already knows.

The room is quiet for a moment while the healing master glares. “Wouldn’t you rather just confess?”

Maybe, he thinks, but cannot say.

The master waits, watching, tapping their foot as though they think he will remove the breathing mask and make the decision right then, right there, tell them who to drag in front of him so that he can speak his peace and what? 

There are three solutions, but the problem is two of them will potentially take everything away from you, and the third, the easy one, may end up taking everything from both you and the person you inflict the truth on. 

Confess, they say to him as though that is the simplest thing in the universe. Confess to someone that they have moved you to the point that the Force has trapped itself inside of you and started growing kyber in your lungs. Confess that your love is strong enough to end your life. Confess.

He thinks about how terrifying such a proclamation must be to someone else. Love me or I will die choking on blood. Love me or I will forget everything I have even known or thought or felt about you. 

Love me for my own sake because it will make it easier for me.

There are three solutions; there are no solutions.  
He breathes the vapor in and looks at the floor until the healing master shrugs their shoulders and walks away, visibly irritated with him, muttering words that he does not catch. Every time he turns his hand in the rays of the sun that fall through the window, his skin glimmers, shimmers, and the shine does not wipe off. He is inundated with it now, in and on and through and everywhere. There is singing in his ears, in his mind, in the hollow between his clavicles, and he knows that it is his kyber sighing.

A lifetime is all that it is, sometimes short and sometimes long, but always ending in the same way, in the Force, of the Force, returning to the Force.

He is caught in a loop, there is a loop inside of him, and he wonders whether it will disentangle itself when he dies. Where will he go? Back to the Force itself or sunk into his own piece of it? Or into the kyber, they will undoubtedly carve out of his body? 

There is a moment where he wonders if he can request who it is given to, but he swallows that down as surely as he has swallowed down his own feelings. How would that be any kinder than confession?

***

He dreams of a field next to a stream. Everything is softly illuminated by a pale, blue glow that radiates out from under his skin because he is full of kyber. Despite this fact, none of his breaths are painful. 

There is someone in the distance walking toward him. There is a warm smile. He thinks that he would know the rise of those shoulders, the arch of those cheekbones anywhere. When he opens his mouth to speak, there is only kyber, tendrils of it arching up into the sky, crawling over his body, vines of it rushing upward, outward. It doesn’t hurt. He is lost.

Kyber covers over everything.

***

There is blood and pieces of dislodged kyber strewn across the bedclothes when he wakes, and he cannot catch his breath no matter how carefully he breathes.

Everything dies eventually. At least he will be outlived by a physical manifestation of love. He will not make it to guardian. He will not serve the temple save by leaving behind crystal that cannot be used for anything at all. The Force has not saved him, and he has not saved himself. 

He holds a hand over his chest, and his heart continues to shudder its way through each beat, but he can feel the sluggish, watery churn of his lungs as the blood runs in and the branches of rock climb out. Drowning is not a pleasant way to go, but there are worse things. There are always worse things. 

He sits as straight against the back of the cot as he can manage and looks at his hands, which glitter in the moonlight that now falls through the window. From the other side of the curtain that divides his cot from the next, someone else coughs. The temple cold, surely, and he listens to it until he eventually descends back into sleep.

***

When he wakes again, someone is sleeping in a chair drawn close to the side of his bed, their face turned away, but he doesn’t need to see the face in order to recognize who it is because that is how all of this works. If he didn’t know just from a glance, just from the curve of an ear or the tilt of the chin or the way that the hair looks soft under the early morning light, there would be no kyber, no danger; it would be just like any other day. He knows who it is because there is no way he could not know, and his lungs seize up, impaling themselves on the thorny branches of crystal nestled there, sending him into a coughing fit that covers his hands and his chin in glittery blood and tiny bits of broken kyber.

Hunched over, choking, gasping--finally drowning, he thinks--he doesn’t notice the presence next to him, the hand on his back rubbing circles, the voice that his distress has completely drowned out. It isn’t until the breathing mask is forced over his face, the vapor quickly calming the coughing, the bacta healing as much as it can but never able to overcome the source because kyber is heedless and steady, it remains even when nothing else does, it grows as long as there is life, Force to sustain it. Soon it will stop, though. Inside of him, it will stop.

Sometimes, he had said, people fall out of love. Maybe it is true. Surely it is true. But not true enough for him. Not quick enough for him. Not to save him anyway.

He opens his eyes scarcely aware that he had even closed them and the sight in front of them would start the coughing cycle all over again if it weren’t for the bacta coursing down his throat, through his lungs.

Those normally bright eyes are so sad that he longs to be able to do something to wipe all the concern away, but he doesn’t know if anything he could offer would help. What could he say, what could he do to erase the spectacle that is him, dying, covered in dried blood and kyber shards, weak and drowning because of a betrayal inside of his own body? 

“You should go,” he says, and his voice is wrecked and ruined and so low he doesn’t even know if it’s identifiable over the hiss of the breathing machine that forces bacta laced air into him.

“Why would I do that?” The hand holding the mask to his face quivers slightly, and the lovely face tilts to look at him fully.

He feels examined. It feels like his skin is slowly being unwrapped, like his thoughts are being spilled across a table and rifled through. When he tries to swallow, something sticks in his throat, and he gags, has to pull away from the mask and spit more blood covered blue into his hand. “You don’t have to see this,” he manages before pressing his face back to the mask.

“I’ve seen hanahiki before.” The hand on the mask is still quivering. “There are cures.”

Every word is an effort, every breath is a precipice over danger, but he endures because there is nothing else he can imagine doing. Just a few minutes more. Just another look. Just one more conversation. One final moment to carry into the black, into the nothing. “I know.”

The other hand settles on his knee, but it is bunched into a fist so tight the knuckles are white. “Why not cure it?”

The piece of kyber he coughs up looks slightly like a flower petal, and it glitters on the bed between them. “There was no good option.” He pauses for a moment, one finger held up to indicate that he is not done, but he needs to let the bacta do its work for a moment. It cannot heal him at this point; it can only prolong. “I did not want to forget, and I did not want to force feelings on anyone.”

The frown is plain as day. So is the glitter of kyber on teeth gnawed lips.

His throats constricts, and he doubles over, hacking rough clumps of blood and crystal into the mask itself, which is hurriedly pulled away and then there are fingers sweeping gently over his cheeks and one hand encouraging his mouth open so he will not choke on what his body is attempting to purge. 

Blood flecks the sheets and their hands. Kyber dust is on everything. 

The eyes on him are wet, angry. “You tell because there might be a chance. You tell because the best option is to live.” He doesn’t even try to hide his own cough.

No, he doesn’t think it works as easily as that. His swallowed feelings have turned into a seed in rich soil. His swallowed feelings should hurt only him and no one else. Though it does not seem to be quite that easy. Now. “The temple cold,” he says.

The mask, wiped clean, is forced back on his face. “So we’re both liars.”

In all of his considerations, he was never able to name the moment when the seed was planted, when the growth took root, when the Force stopped flowing through him and, instead, fixed onto itself. No matter how hard he tried, he could not identify it, pinpoint it and call it, label it like the diagrams in the books that he looked at when he was trying to figure out how his love was going to kill him slowly, which part of his lungs was going to be infiltrated first. There is no cartographer yet who has been able to map the path of affection, the way it winds, the routes it takes. 

There are just two people sitting next to each other on a hospital bed, dying faster than they are supposed to because something inside of them has been stoppered.

Their hands find each other’s and twist together. Something in his chest eases a little bit.

“Did you think I would say no?”

His voice behind the mask is still too wet. “No.” He runs a thumb over the knuckles, which are covered in a smattering of scars from skillful punches like his own. “I was worried you would try so hard to say yes even when you shouldn’t that it would be the end of you, that it would drown you itself.”

The light in those eyes is so bright that he doesn’t know if it’s just them or if it’s the kyber nestled inside. “You’re drowning me.” A moment of silence and the hand clings tighter. “We’re drowning each other. Wouldn’t you rather breathe?”

He has never been in love before this, this all-encompassing thing that feels like too much, like it is too big, like it cannot be voiced because he cannot put all of that on another being. It’s a stone he is tied to in a lake where he is sinking, and now someone is at the shore offering to cut it off because it is pulling him under too. 

His intention was always to protect everyone else from his own failure, but it seems like he could not even manage that. 

Maybe his kyber shards were singing all along. Maybe he was so intent on listening to the sounds of his own demise that he never thought to reach out for another, tuned in on him as much as his was tuned for someone else. 

The fingers lift the mask away and the lips are close enough that the only air he breathes in is what they breathe out. It soothes in a way that even the bacta did not. “Stay a little longer. Please.”

He threads his fingers into short, soft hair, and he knows his hands are coated in dried blood but that doesn’t seem to bother either of them. Every intake of air is easier as he leans their foreheads together and closes his eyes. He thinks about the talk of space, of Jedi, of futures. “I did not want to ground you if you wanted to fly.”

“Ah, fool,” it’s breathed out in the same way someone else might say dear. “I only would have wanted to fly with you.” 

Something inside of him shifts, but it does not sting the way he thought it might. For the first time in months, it does not hurt to breathe, and he wonders if it’s the same for him. “I’ll follow where you go if you’ll have me.” It’s a strange way to say I love you, but they are both strange men, too much like Jedi and like each other, apparently.

The laughter is slightly hysterical, the hand on his cheek is warm, and they are so close that when he opens his eyes, they are looking at each other cross-eyed. “I’m dying to have you.” 

In any other instance, he might be able to appreciate the joke, but he just hums and leans forward. The kiss is softer than it has any right to be considering the circumstances, two arches of kyber crystal clambering through soft tissue to entwine together, two hearts trapped by their own weight loosening, two loops of Force finally freed.

***

Later, after they have convalesced, Chirrut mounts the kyber grown in Baze’s body in his staff, and Baze secures a shard that formed in Chirrut’s lung in his lightbow. And when they lie together, bodies intertwined in the darkness, soft sighs that sound like singing, it still feels like they are illuminated from the inside out, vessels full of soft blue light that rises and falls with their ardor, which grows until love covers over everything.


End file.
